No Man's Sky

The game that came out in August 2016 lacked several of the features described beforehand, above all multiplayer. A day after launch, two players reached the same spot on the same planet, as they confirmed through their Twitch streams, yet never saw each other.

Hello Games had expected about 10,000 concurrent players and got more than 500,000. The studio went almost silent, and by October the game had one of the worst user ratings on Steam.

Then came the free updates, from bases and vehicles to multiplayer in 2018. The announcement was often just an emoji that studio founder Sean Murray posted two or three days ahead. Eight years after launch, Steam reviews reached Very Positive.

If variety matters to you, note that at launch some critics called the game repetitive, while others praised the tech behind its universe. Players give it 84% positive across 319,477 reviews, critics 61 on Metacritic. In our Recommended Score it ranks 2,940 of 4,736 games.

Liked it? Try Subnautica, where you survive on an ocean planet, and ASTRONEER, where you colonize planets.